Bamboo Textiles- A Natural Fiber?

The 1,300 species of bamboo grown all over the world are made of cellulose (as any other plant), besides lignin, hemicellulose, starch and silica. The cellulose fibers are minuscule and in many lengths. Their shape is tubular like a hose averaging 2 to 3 millimeters long, and their width is 100 times smaller than that, visible only with a microscope.

Any textile fiber, natural or artificial, needs to be at least 30 millimeters long. The yarn produced by [...] are 38 mm, 51 mm, 76 mm and 86 mm long, as stated on their website. Therefore, those yarns are 10 to 30 times longer than the natural cellulose bamboo fiber.

There is no way to mend bamboo fibers to make them long enough to produce a yarn.

Every so called ‘bamboo fabric’ is made of a textile fiber called viscose. [...] mentions this fact on their website, as well as [...] and many other companies do. Nobody hides the fact that it is made of a viscose fiber. And they are not ashamed of saying that clearly.

So, what is the fraud about? The problem is that viscose is an artificial fiber obtained by a chemical process created more than 100 years ago and that uses a very toxic product called carbon disulfide. This product reacts and melts with the natural cellulose fiber transforming into a plastic substance similar to nylon. After that, the substance is processed by an extruder producing the yarns that will be cut later for textile purposes. Any type of cellulose fiber can be used to produce viscose, so they can be from trees, bushes, or even agricultural waste (wheat, corn, or rice), and bamboo is also included.

Viscose fibers always have the same chemical and physical characteristics no matter the type of cellulose it was mixed with, so a viscose fiber from eucalyptus is exactly the same as a viscose fiber from wheat and also the same as a viscose fiber from bamboo.

Therefore the fraud I am talking about is that: most of the viscose fiber produced in China is made of bamboo because there bamboo is abundant and cheap. As the process of producing viscose is pollutant, in the last 50 years, most of developed countries have stopped manufacturing this type of product, so nowadays viscose production became strong in Asia with low salaries and high levels of pollution.

On the other hand, worldwide, bamboo is recognized as a natural and ecologic product (and they are absolutely right!). Unfortunately, for marketing purposes, unethical business people have publicized viscose fabrics as bamboo fabrics, hiding the fact that after becoming viscose fabric there is no way to find bamboo in it. Actually, when you buy a bamboo-viscose fabric, it is impossible to determine from which kind of cellulose fiber it was made of. Even if we could, it wouldn’t change the fact that viscose fabric is artificial and pollutant far from being natural and ecologic.

I hope, I got straight to the point on this detailed explanation. If any doubt is still left, please let me know. To me, it is not a problem to go over this subject again and again, and I will go the extra mile to unveil this fraud that I personally consider an absurd. It makes me sick to see opportunist people trying to take advantage of the eco movement spread all over the world by misleading others.“